Free Thought Lives

The Globalisation of Ethnonationalism

In Reading Lolita in Tehran, the Iranian author and professor Azar Nafisi discussed her experiences teaching the novels of Austen, Joyce and Nabokov to Iranian students as the Islamic Revolution transformed the country. Nafisi related their themes of empowerment and resistance to the oppression and the censorship she saw around herself. For liberals, this was among the most inspiring stories of globalisation. Art and ideas that had been dreamed up on one side of the world could reach and change people on the other. Liberal values could take root in authoritarian societies and grow, and spread their branches and flower throughout them.

This has always been a challenge for conservative governments and nationalistic governments. “European civilisation will have a beneficial effect on us,” said the Turkish nationalist Ziya Gökalp:

… not only with its science and technology, but also in matters of taste and morality. But this influence is permissible only to the extent that it helps dismantle the Persian one. The moment it attempts to supplant what it destroys, it has itself become harmful and should be resisted.

Yet, of course, illiberal values can be spread as well. Once, Karl Marx was an obscure German-Jewish philosopher scribbling away in London as his family starved to death at home, but in time his ideas reached everywhere from Cuba to Korea. Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian Islamist ideologue, inspired jihadis around the globe.

So it is in the Twenty-First Century. The Christchurch killer’s manifesto, as I have written, is so full of in-jokes that it is difficult to tell what is sarcastic and what is serious. What is clear, however, is that the man had a vast array of international interests and influences. He called himself an “eco-fascist” (despite saying little about the environment). He lionised the British fascist Oswald Mosley. His favourite government was China’s. He wrote about conflicts in the Balkans, and Central and Eastern Europe. His title, The Great Replacement, was a reference to the work of the reclusive French anti-immigration author Renaud Camus, who commented, not especially convincingly:

I worry about our Muslim friends. I think that for security they should gather in a large fortress, the “land of Islam” (fifty seven countries anyway…), and live in peace according to their tastes and according to their faith, well protected against the imbalanced.

The Christchurch killer’s potpourri of influences reflects the curiously international nature of white nationalism. Rather than nations having their own united, cohesive political movements they tend to have fragmentary and contradictory groups, drawing on ideological trends from around the world.

Pentti Linkola in 2011

“Eco-fascists,” for example, among whom the Christchurch killer placed himself with arguable levels of seriousness, are influenced by an austere Finnish fisherman named Pentti Linkola. Linkola believes that if human beings are to coexist with nature, the only solutions mass death and severe birth control. “Who misses all those who died in the Second World War? Who misses the twenty million executed by Stalin? Who misses Hitler’s six million Jews?” Eco-fascists add, of course, that if any population should survive the mass death it is theirs. Linkola does not call himself an eco-fascist but he has endorsed at least some form of tribalism when he has written:

What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship’s axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides of the boat.

Naturally, most white nationalists would not accept Linkola’s ideas. They like modern material standards. They want success for all white populations (most of whom Linkola, one suspects, would see as hands grasping at the sides of his boat). They would not endorse the kind of cheerful misanthropy that has led Linkola to praise the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as a “splendid choice.” But some do, and the more incompatible elements one’s “movement” has the less it can even lay claim to the word.

More contentious than environmentalism has been faith. Fascism has always contained an odd mélange of religious and supernatural ideas. French nationalists like Charles Maurras tended to promote authoritarian forms of Catholicism while the Italian radical traditionalist Julius Evola was a bitter critic of the Catholic Church. Within the Nazi hierarchy, Christians and pagans uneasily coexisted.

The modern Alt-Right has taken this diversity to comic levels. The Alt-Right Corporation, a hubristic attempt to centralize the movement’s different strands, was founded by Richard Spencer, a Swede named Daniel Friberg and an Iranian-American named Jason Jorjani. Jorjani, a well-heeled academic, was best known for a book titled Prometheus and Atlantis, which argued against “Abrahamic religion” and in favour of the existence of paranormal powers and the wisdom of Hellenic and Oriental faiths. Jorjani left the Alt-Right in 2017, complaining that it had become “a magnet for white trash” who did not appreciate his esoteric intellectualism.

When Trump was elected, there was a real chance for radical nationalists to win supporters to their cause. Few things were more detrimental to the Alt-Right’s chances than the essential cosmopolitanism of their leadership. The white nationalist rank and file were baffled to fire up Alt Right.com at Easter, for example, and find an essay extolling the pagan origins of the festival. This, along with other internal and external factors, helped the Alt-Right to dissolve into a stream of political and religious microcultures.

An essential force in modern white nationalism has been the publishing house Arktos, which publishes authors from across the dissident right, insisting: “Arktos does not seek to propagate any specific ideology, system of beliefs or viewpoint, nor do we seek consistency.” There, curious readers can find conservative, fascist, pagan and even Hindu books from authors as diverse as Charles Maurras and the Indian spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

Guillaume Faye in 2015

One of the most notable authors published by Arktos was the French white nationalist Guillaume Faye. Some of the most profound influences on the Alt-Right have been French. It was from Alain de Benoist, who claims to oppose the movement, that the concept of “ethnopluralism”, or a focus on ethnic difference rather than ethnic supremacy, emerged. Faye, who died of cancer earlier this year, was more polemical and less elliptical than his countryman. In his book A Global Coup, he wrote:

The current geostrategic divide must not be allowed to conceal tomorrow’s ethnic reality, the reality of a world in which Whites will find themselves ever more threatened and in a minority position, and will thus be compelled to regroup.

Faye envisaged a union of white people’s that he called Septentrion:

Septentrion can be defined as the regrouping of all peoples of albo-European descent located in the northern hemisphere, spanning from North America to Europe and the Russian Federation, in addition to two crucial septentrional extensions: Argentina and Australia.

One might think that the Christchurch killer is a sign of the realisation of Faye’s ambitions. Here, after all, was an Australian who had been inspired by European conflicts with Muslim populations to enact terrorism that, he hoped, would fuel racial violence in the United States of America.

I suspect, however, that these crimes are not illustrative of the plausibility but the implausibility of Faye’s ideas. White nationalist circles are so thick with different international influences that they have no individual or collective coherence. This does not preclude there being terrible crimes from unhinged, brutal sociopaths but it makes any political organisation difficult.

One popular criticism of globalisation, on the left and the right, has been that it promotes atomisation as traditional religious and communal identities are broken down and replaced with a varied political, spiritual, cultural and consumerist phenomena. The communist Zygmunt Bauman and the traditionalist Alain de Benoist have had remarkably similar perspectives on what Bauman calls “liquid modernity” – a time where identities, beliefs and relationships are in flux. Ironically, white nationalism, which is so hostile to liberals and globalists, is symptomatic of these tendencies: a vague internationalist ideology which exposes people to such a variety of influences, rarely rooted in their own collective life, as to produce difference and alienate them from each other. Thus, a supposed weakness of liberalism becomes its own perverse form of strength.

Ben Sixsmith is an English writer living in Poland. Visit his website here and follow him on Twitter @BDSixsmith

Correction: The Christchurch shooter was originally misidentified as a New Zealander. Apologies for the error.

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64 Comments

The reality of the post-colonial experience is that newly liberated countries soon decayed into political squabbles along ethnic lines. Modern countries are hierarchical, and political decision-making is confined to a small number of persons. Where you have a society with differing groups with differing ethnic identity, there is always a power struggle to seize control over the state for your own ethnic group, or to separate if you can seize control. Whether this comes from hunger for power or existential fear about how the other will treat you if they seize power (see Rwanda, Turkey, Germany), it is how humans behave.

Mass immigration in the West is essentially taking relatively homogeneous countries and slowly turning them into ethnically diverse countries, which means that ethnic polarization and ethnonationalist politics (to justify seizure of power by your group) is probably inevitable unless there is a change of course. Given the economic benefits of mass immigration to capital, it does not look like there will be a change of course probably until it is too late, as “mainstream” opinion seems to regard what is an inevitable political struggle driven by power politics as something they can propagandize people into avoiding. Of course, you can control what people say in public, but you can’t control what they do, and if they perceive an existential threat, it doesn’t matter what you say.

The emergence of ultranationalism in Western countries is an inevitable result of mass immigration, and ultranationalist movements and probably terrorism will only increase as historic ethnic majorities approach minority status (see Lebanon civil war driven by demographics).

Looking at non-Western countries, mass communications allow governments to more effectively propagandize the masses than previously possible. Khomeini used cassette tapes to spread his message. Power is based on numbers and coordination between members of groups, and mass communications allows groups to grow and coordinate action on a level unseen in prior eras. The rise of nationalism and religious fundamentalism are hardly surprising given the adoption of mass communication strategies. If one looks to the West, you lack real government control over media messaging, and private companies push consumerism, materialism and hedonism, but there is nothing inevitable about that message. It is driven by private profit, and exploits human characterological weaknesses. There is no reason why a non-Western culture is going to let private companies come in and undermine the morals of their own people, when they can use the media to instill fundamentalism or nationalism. Further, materialism doesn’t make much sense to people who don’t have a lot of material to spend.

The problem of liberalism is that it presupposes that the significant social unit is the individual, and that the individual pursues some kind of self-interested strategy qua individual. This works in WEIRD countries okay, but in most places in the world, the significant social unit is clan, tribe, ethnicity, and/or religion. People don’t vote on the basis of individual interest, they vote on collective self-interest. Moreover, game theory suggests that ethnocentric strategies are more effective than individualistic strategies and universalist strategies, which means once you have some groups deploying ethnocentric strategies, other groups begin to mirror those strategies out of fear of falling behind. Hence, why WEIRD countries are likely to become less WEIRD as trends continue.

Liberalism has a lot going for it in many ways, but it rests upon a philosophical anthropology which should not be taken seriously, and rather than being inevitable, it depends upon a number of preconditions, most of which are being systematically undermined by the demands of global capitalism. At the same time, liberals seem to look at liberalism as some kind of ultimate philosophical description, when in fact it is at best a pragmatic tool of social management, and at worst, a blinder that prevents clear thinking. The changes we are seeing being driven by structural demographic changes and material changes in society, and they won’t be sermonized away.

“Mass immigration in the West is essentially taking relatively homogeneous countries and slowly turning them into ethnically diverse countries, which means that ethnic polarization and ethnonationalist politics (to justify seizure of power by your group) is probably inevitable unless there is a change of course. Given the economic benefits of mass immigration to capital, it does not look like there will be a change of course probably until it is too late, as “mainstream” opinion seems to regard what is an inevitable political struggle driven by power politics as something they can propagandize people into avoiding. ”

One of the problems with mass immigration in Europe is that it has not been “slow” and the dramatic changes in the social fabric have created cultural problems that effect native people who are at the bottom of the social ladder more deeply than those at the top. The new and sudden influx of people with wildly different cultures and values has created isolated pockets of immigrants who have no desire or incentive to assimilate into the country’s culture and norms. Furthermore, Whatever economic benefits to be had by immigration will be at the expense of the poor in favor of the rich.

You can trace that back to colonialism and western displacement of power in the nations in which mass immigrants originate from. Had the US not gotten involved in Iraq, ISIS would not have sprung up. Had ISIS not occurred, the FSA would have definitely overthrown Al-Assad. Had Al-Assad been overthrown, many less casualties would have taken place in the last 4 years, and that means that significantly less people would have left their homes and emigrated to Europe.

My best guess for the future in Western countries is an authoritarian “anti-fascist” state which exhibits all the structural features of fascism (at least from a Marxist perspective). Civil liberties will have to go to prevent various groups from coordinating against the state (which will be controlled by an ethnic minority like in Syria), and the power of the state will be used to protect the wealth and privilege of the oligarchs (or to remove and replace them with new oligarchs loyal to the state and party).

It’s age old, and returning strong in the USA. It doesn’t have to be nationalism or racism, as any tribalism will do. Some people resent that other people are better off (jealousy), so they band together to make things right (confiscate from the other/Robin Hood, control the other, demonize the other) by harming the other to make themselves better off.
Liberty and equal protection are utopian ideals, just as is central planning with resulting equity.

In the NLs, our new white nationalist is politician Thierry Baudet, jumping in the last voting from almost zero to 15% of the national votes. Big alarm in all newspapers, caricatures of him as the new Hitler, and dead threatening during a demonstration. His main propaganda point is the glory (and, thereby, the end of gory) of the “boreal” people and culture, and this, of course, he shares with Aleksandr Dugin. I wonder how he will do in the next polls.

All cultures were created by humans from somewhere else (immigrants). Those who hope to preserve old cultures as the norm rather than as history or entertainment will fail. There is only the current culture, which changes over time and people and their worlds change.

Yes David, when Europeans “immigrated” the New World to bring their Cultural Diversity, wiping out the native culture, it was simply the work of a natural process. Not the work of humans at all. Nope. Totally inevitable, just like evolution.

That is an argument which is self defeating. If all cultures were created by humans from ‘elsewhere’, where did the first ‘alien culture’ arise? Or is this what you believe? the premise that a force from outer space somehow altered the mind or culture of the indigenous primates……ho hum

White nationalist is far-fetched. Believer in the supremacy of Western civilization, yes, but calling him a white nationalist demonstrates the typical lack of nuance of left-dominated societal and political narrative.

Y’all are really desperate to blame ANYTHING for the Christchurch shooting except the actual culprits. “Muh globalism”, seriously?!? You’re trying to pin this on globalism when the subhuman piece of trash surrounded the whole massacre with Internet meme culture?

A while ago when the quillette nazi apologists (excuse the redundancy) were defending PewDiePie, I warned y’all that he was using white supremacist dog whistles, and you just mocked me and called me crazy and a troll, and then this dipshit memelord dedicates a mass murder to PewDiePie, I guess I was right all along huh? Oh no, wait, it was MUH GLOBALISM. Screw you, screw this entire cesspool of a website.

Youtubers and memes are not “just for fun” and are not “ironic”, Tarrant openly admitted in his manifesto that memes and “jokes” were their recruitment tools, they are cultural leitmotifs used to engender a sense of community and shared purpose. There’s your actual culprit, clear as day, this whole episode was full of “memes” and “jokes”, this is how the white supremacists have been radicalizing people and spreading hate.

Want to actually stop the next deranged white male who decides that the world is too brown for their liking? (it’s a rhetorical question, I know you don’t) Then start cracking down on hate speech for real; “jokes” are not an excuse, “memes” are not an excuse, Internet meme and youtuber culture needs to DIE and platform owners need to be held personally responsible for allowing any hate speech at all, period. No more excuses, no more “muh freeze peach”, your bullshit apologia now has a body count, being nice to the white supremacists is not going to make them less violent, they are subhuman scum and must be taught that there is absolutely NO place in the world for literal garbage like them.

you: the only way to commit further such acts is to alienate these killers

look, I get that you want to alienate these people, but you should at least try to make some coherent argument as to why it’s the right move, instead of just saying “you guys need to do what I want because of this terrible tragedy”. Or maybe you think pointing out that he said “subscribe to Pewdiepie”, which if you didn’t know is a super popular meme, is a really good argument (?). As if he became radicalized in the past 2 months or something.

While I’m not for OP’s solution of banning hate speech, what is your take on the solution? Should people with ethno-supremacist ideals be given a pat on the back? I’m not saying we should ban hate speech, but what they are saying is certainly worthy of zero praise.

Calm down Francis. As per usual your hysteria is wrong. A cool collected view of the situation shows that the greatest inspiration of the ChristChurch shooter were the images, deaths and propaganda statements of the Islamist Caliphate in Iraq and Syria. The origin of Tarrant is not the Fortnight Flossdance, Spicy Tik Tok Memes or YouTube commentary. It’s the jihadi beheading videos, execution videos, etc… the visual horror of religious / race war reflected back upon the Muslim community as innocent as the Parisian nightclubbers butchered in the name of extremist notions.

Your rant is a substitute for analysis and thinking a politically convenient and conformist way to view the world within your ideology. It’s the epitome of lazy thinking.

I’ve seen real scum commenting on this site, but trying to blame Muslims for getting killed has to be a new low.

Here, straight from the manifesto:

“Whilst we may use edgy humour and memes in the vanguard stage, and to attract a young audience, eventually we will need to show the reality of our thoughts and our more serious intents and wishes for the future.”

There you have it.

Yes, memes are a tool of white supremacy, so are edgy jokes. All your excuses are over, either you support cracking down on hate, or you support white supremacy.

Princess, what an appropriate moniker. There you go again, not wanting to face inconvenient truths. There is nearly always a surface and depth to social phenomena, pointing at what the killer says he is doing is a start, but it is superficial. There are other things going on here and it is the job of thinking people to look and speak. Hysteria does not help anybody.
And why are you throwing Muslims under the bus like that? Since when did the actions of ISIS or the new Caliphate speak for ‘legitimate’ Muslim opinion? I thought ISIS and the propagandists of the Caliphate where illegitimate Islamic spokes people. No?
You miss the entire point, I am explicitly stating that the Muslim victims are innocent, like the European victims, Parisians and the Berliners at Christmas markets, etc.. all are innocent. Both communities are the victims of each others violent extremists and these two violent communities are mimicking each other and speaking through violence. It was naive of the Islamists to believe that their personal freelance violence would not be imitated by insane members of their victims communities at some point. And this is what the Islamists want, or at least think they want, because it feeds their victim to violence narrative that they believe will bring them to power and victory. Do you not see what is going on here …. Princess.

Edgy jokes are a tool of white supremacists and stand up comedians. Look at all those anti Trump parodies….Hmmmm. But cracking down on guns, like the New Zealand leader did, is a very good idea. A white or islamic supremacist with a knife or car can only harm up to maybe a dozen people. That’s bad enough, but not like the gun.

Yes, let us punish those who have done nothing because of the actions of another. Let us prevent the fascists winning by acting increasingly authoritarian. As a liberal I do despair how the fearful dance to the extremists tune. Acting with courage is the answer, along with punishing the individual responsible. Instead collective punishment by the cowards who pretend to virtuous has ruled the day.

Underlove, besides standing up for the concept of hate speech, do you have a broader philosophy with respect to this kind of brewing communal conflict? Politicians and law enforcement can treat white nationalism like fundamentalist Islam, as a dangerous ideology whose adherents will be surveilled and arrested. But what about racial identity within multiracial society, when is it ‘legitimate’; what should the immigration policies of western countries be; what about the reactionary aspects of Muslim culture, what is their place in liberal or progressive western society? It is the lack of any coherent answer to these kinds of questions which allows someone like Tarrant to portray himself as the future.

Well, there you have it folks, straight from the horse’s mouth: humour is a tool of the devil, if you see somebody laughing at an inappropriate meme report them to the local anti-fascist authorities before they endanger social cohesion and equity.

Nobody was mocking you. It’s simply being factual pointing out that you’re “crazy and a troll”, as again evidenced with your bizarre and incoherent rambling rant of a post.
It’s hardly surprising then that you would believe another’s bizarre and incoherent rambling manifesto literally, if it supports your own ideological confirmation bias.
Truthfully now, does all this makes your own trigger finger itchy?

I think you should rename yourself Princess Underpants because you are clearly the type who wanders about wearing them on them on their head. Try to get it through your thick and hysterical skull, nobody likes Nazis. In fact everybody hates them. They suck. Everyone knows they suck. About the only thing I have seen agreed upon in Quilette is that the people here wish that the general public would hold Commies in equal contempt. No one is apologizing for them, and accusations of such are so ludicrous that one may perfectly rationally assume you are a troll or an idiot.

That said, people are left with questions. Why would somebody do something like this? Is there some actual problem that he latched in to that will cause people to justify such behaviour in the future? How much of what he said should be taken seriously and how much is just the rambling of a violent fool? I understand that people such as yourself aren’t up to having conversations like this because emotional believers can’t separate talking about ideas with believing in them, but try to understand others are not so encumbered.

You may feel my remarks are harsh but you called me a Nazi apologist just for reading, so go fuck yourself.

“Here, after all, was a New Zealander who had been inspired by European conflicts with Muslim populations to enact terrorism that, he hoped, would fuel racial violence in the United States of America.”

It’s interesting that while globalists like John Lennon preached duty to an abstract humanity filled with strangers with no commonality, the racialist alternative is no better at building an unatomized society. As E Michael Jones shows in his books, assimilating immigrants into “white culture” was about destroying prohibitions and duties imposed their by native Jewish and Catholic faiths and having them homogenize into permissive Unitarian/WASP values that encourage individualism and the pursuit of success. Whitness was a counterfeit identity imposed by progressive social engineers, just as serving an abstract humanity is today

What a load of rubbish. I am white. I believe in a common set of culture goals in the United States. Does that make me a white nationalist/supremacist? No! However, I would accept plain old nationalist.

Do I believe in individual freedom, natural rights granted by a Creator, representative democracy, freedom of religion, and a number of other things? Sure I do. So do many Latino’s, Blacks, Whites, Asians, Native Americans, etc. Many of their ancestors have died in wars defending these very same rights and freedoms, as have mine. These are things that culture is built from.

Do a large number of current people resent immigrants that expect everyone else to cater to different cultural aspects that do not fit into our current culture? Sure. Probably the best example are Islamic Fundamentalists who believe that all other religions are infidels who can be killed or lied to or taxed.

Immigrants that assimilate don’t have to become white nor give up their ethnic background. They just need to accept the basic tenants that the country’s culture have come to accept. Jeez, just drive down most any American street and you can find Indian, Chinese, Mexican, Thai, American, French, etc, restaurants. Same with grocery stores and many religious places of worship.

The other thing that is galling are immigrants that expect to be taken care of with housing assistance, food stamps, free school supplies, etc. This does take taxes and in many cases money that parents could spend on their own kids education. Part of our cultural background is the Protestant work ethic. Immigrants should expect to participate. Now, I’m not saying all immigrants are this way, but a large number are. This era is the first where immigrants are not expected to have the ability to provide for themselves or a sponsor who will do so. The great European immigrant rush in the early 20th century had a large number sent back because they could not meet this requirement. We should implement this again.

Perhaps the Quillette editors should take a break from telling us on Twitter what glorious defenders of intellectual freedom they are, long enough to actually edit their articles. Or are we to believe that neither the author nor editor were aware the shooter was Australian? Sloppy.

It was sloppy, Victoria, and I take responsibility. I knew he was Australian but sometimes one’s desire to make a point overwhelms one’s carefulness in making it and I forgot. I’m sorry for it, because I know how much factual mistakes can remove one from an argument. I’ll try not to be so careless again.

«Naturally, most white nationalists would not accept Linkola’s ideas. They like modern material standards. They want success for all white populations» – the most outspoken racist statement I’ve ever read on this site

So him pointing out that white nationalists are inconsistent hypocrites is a bad thing? Not that black/Latino/Han/Arab/etc nationalists are any different in that regard. It’s not a mind set that appeals to logical consistency.

I struggle reading articles like these. I am never sure what one really means by “fascist”, “white nationalist”, “white supremacist”, “Alt-right”. etc etc. What do each of these groups believe and how do they differ? Does it matter what country they come from? Is a French white nationalist different from an American one? Anyone?

Where America’s founding fathers not the original white nationalists? Surely they were, & for good reason. They knew that it would be difficult enough getting European immigrants to give up their various European identities, languages & nationalities to form a single nation of white, English-speaking Americans. Attempting to include Native & African Americans was completely out of the question, because they knew that multi-racial nationhood would never work.

And so it has proved. But the state is such a powerful entity that it is able – thus far, at least – to deny this reality, insisting that it is a nation after all.

America is NOT a nation, but, like the country which spawned it (Britain), a mercenary “patron state” deceitfully posing as a nation, in order to legitimise itself, its ruling elites & the immense power they wield & abuse.

White nationalism poses a huge potential threat to any state with a white majority posing as a multi-racial nation. Thus, I suggest, its demonisation, just as the state also demonised anarchism, which originally, to anarchists, at least, meant something very different from what it has come to mean.

Anarchists correctly recognised the state as the source of most social injustice & wanted to correct this by doing away with it. They were naive to think that this would work, but their intentions were noble enough in wanting to put an end to state tyranny. And the same with socialism, only the socialist state proved even more tyrannical than the capitalist state.

But still we are left with mercenary “patron states” posing as a nations, but based on lies, deceit & different regimes of rewards & intimidation, which are inherently unjust, inhumane & – now most pressingly of all – unsustainable on our finite, vulnerable & overpopulated planet. Secular academics in the social & political sciences have taken the place of medieval clerics in maintaining a social order which works well for them.

There is a reason why civilisations rise & fall, & no civilisation has risen higher than ours, but its impending fall will be a global catastrophe on a scale that does not bear thinking about.

What does bear thinking about is WHY civilisations fall. I have discovered the reason, which is a fatal flaw in the very nature of the state itself: the fact that is built on lies, deceit & a regime of rewards & intimidation, which is best understood by way of analogy: https://twitter.com/rogerahicks/status/1035814311325782016

I added the sentence about “secular academics in the social & political sciences having taken the place of medieval clerics in maintaining a social order which works well for them” right at the end.

What I meant was that they help maintain the socio-political & economic order by rationalising & defending it, which they have good reason to do, from the perspective of their own narrow & short-sighted self-interests.

The reason this is so important is because others, including politicians, look to academics as authorities in their supposed fields of expertise. Only, today’s social & political sciences are trapped in a pre-Darwinian dark age (an overreaction to the abuse of Darwin by the Nazis) with as misguided an understanding of their subject as medieval academics had of astronomy, chemistry, physics & medicine.

So you have a unique insight to the truth that no one else has, that justifies your world view. And it must be that your world view is correct, which makes you the keeper of the truth. To be honest that sounds a bit cult like to me. I think it more likely that your initial assumption of how the world works is wrong and so your explanation is as well.

If Ben Sixsmith can’t get something as simple as the nationality of the Christchurch gunman right, and correct his mistake when he’s had the chance, I’m not going to put a heck of a lot of trust in his take on more complex issues.

I’ve reread the article and I’m afraid I didn’t get a lot out of it the second time around either, as far as I can tell the authors main point is that the alt-right sort of people aren’t all that united in their view point, but isn’t that to be expected of large groups that cover large areas? Are US Republicans united in their view point? How about Christians? Muslims? Anyone?

Yes, it was a careless mistake, as Mr Sixsmith acknowledges. The assertion he refuses correct it is unsubstantiated and is your imagination run wild. Newspapers make mistakes routinely, they get corrected (sometimes not), and they live to publish another day.

Is one and done the good standard to hold? Perhaps if it were a 2+2=17 or “the earth is flat” howler. If this mistake were on a important test, say for university admission or a professional credential, I think your objection would have some weight. Whether or not the person was an Aussie or a Kiwi, does it change our understanding?

Are there other mistakes? What are they?

Or is this relatively minor mistake a pretext used to discount everything else?

The West has adopted identity politics and assigned people to identity groups based on their immutable characteristics. The motivation for imposing this system to replace the liberal system that was based on rejecting this concept is an interesting subject, but has no relevance to the realities this system has produced.

The idea that ethnonationalism is based on anything but the logical consequence of the current identity-driven system is misguided. Perhaps it is the word ‘nationalism’ that has confused people. Tribal warfare is always about territorial authority. One may view, for example, feminism as a ‘movement for women’s equality’ but all it actually is is a demand for territorial authority for females. In sort, sexual nationalism.

The demand for political, economic and social treatment based on one’s membership in an identity group can not be divorced from the playing field where the game must be undertaken. An example: The imposition of ‘LGBT-friendly’ studies in the education system is not, as is argued, an attempt to engender tolerance and social harmony. It is simply the establishment of LGBT authority over the territory and behaviour of the students and the teachers. Whether one is sympathetic to the concerns of the LGBT tribe or not, it is a mistake to imagine their efforts are motivated by anything but territorial authority to which all – regardless of their tribe – must submit.

To understand white ethnonationalism, its motivating psychology, and its ambitions, simply study the variegated forms of feminism and their application in the West. The unifying theme is territorial authority, not philosophical cohesion.

The shooter appears to have cycled through a vast number of ideologies and proposed motivations throughout his short life. Many contradictory. I think it’s safer to say he wanted lash out and then latched on to whatever excuse was available.

This is the case with most killers. Much Islamic terrorism isn’t “Islamic” but really just low status men lashing out. Maybe they had some snap conversion six months ago, but it’s skin deep.

Yes, Islam is the violent religion of a desert bandit, which doesn’t help. And yes Muslims being clannish and low IQ makes them more prone to this stuff.

But let’s not get swept up in “the ideology did it” when most of these people are just losers and don’t really have an ideology.

“Much Islamic terrorism isn’t “Islamic” but really just low status men lashing out. Maybe they had some snap conversion six months ago, but it’s skin deep.

Yes, Islam is the violent religion of a desert bandit, which doesn’t help. And yes Muslims being clannish and low IQ makes them more prone to this stuff.”

After eight years of living here in Brussels, a city with a population that’s almost 33% Muslim and home to over 300 ISIS recruits, I’ve often seen the type of young male Muslim dropout/street punk/criminal that you described; they are the ones who joined ISIS, or support ISIS, and who still live at home with their parents.

I heard on TV a few years ago one of our local Moroccan-Belgian culture enrichers saying that “ISIS was the biggest, baddest, street gang of them all” so he joined. The obvious problem on the cultural enrichment front is that it only seemed to be young, male, low status, MUSLIM losers (usually the children or grandchildren of Third World immigrants) who ever went on mass murdering rampages in their First World host countries; that is until Brenton Tarrant came along and, as a non-Muslim, targeted Muslims with his very own GoPro version of “jihad.”

Brenton Tarrant’s form of jihad (without the rape) was not much different than the rape and murder jihad that 7,500 European-Muslim ISIS recruits went on in Syria and Iraq over the last five years. Hundreds of these European-Muslim ISIS recruits are now back home in Europe, after having had their rape and murder jihadi holiday (“boys will be boys”), to their useless lives – mostly on welfare and as petty criminals – as if nothing had happened. Thankfully Brenton Tarrant won’t be getting off nearly as lightly for his jihad murder as the locals here in Brussels have gotten off for theirs.

Frankly, after the hundreds of Muslim terrorist attacks that have killed thousands of non-Muslims all over the world since the seminal 9/11 attack that killed 2,996 in the USA in 2001, I’m surprised that it took almost eighteen years until someone turned the tables and did this same type of targeted terrorist attack on Muslims. This attack on Muslims was no a surprise to anyone with half a brain and a bit of foresight. And it doesn’t take an Einstein to know that there’ll be more attacks like this to come.

after the hundreds of Muslim terrorist attacks that have killed thousands of non-Muslims all over the world since the seminal 9/11 attack that killed 2,996 in the USA in 2001, I’m surprised that it took almost eighteen years until someone turned the tables

Well, one could count the wars waged on Iraq & Afghanistan as “turning the tables”. This isn’t intended as a tu quoque, but I don’t think that it can be swept under the table: even low estimates put the number of civilian deaths attributable to direct violence in Iraq at about 200,000; there’s about 31,000 documented civilian deaths in Afghanistan (so far).

I understand the objections to the Iraq war. The objections to the US invasion of Afghanistan I don’t understand. I think it had a bona fide case, and the rest of NATO as well as other allies agreed. Further, Mullah Omar and pals were given the chance to give up Al Qaeda. They refused. Take care with whom you invite to set up terrorist camps in your country.

Going after the specific people that attacked us made sense. Trying to nation build in the Middle East did not. Those people aren’t genetically capable of creating a first world country. The lives and treasure spent on that fool errand is a crime that should be punished.

The goal should be to make it so people in the Middle East leave us alone. Africa is full of third world hellholes and they aren’t flying planes into our buildings.

I like when a nut job intellectually throws up all over the map and people sift through the mess to find some meaning for his actions. It’s what makes ISIS so dangerous, they have a distinct and focused ideology.

‘Whiteness’ is a social construct.
Identity politics, is essentially a regression to tribal politics. ‘white power’ can be clearly read as Other Power, which is to say my tribes lack of power. Calling me white is a way to appeal to a redress of imbalance. I refuse the label as I refuse the implied injustice. white nationalists are just as stupid- the equivalent of retorting to someone who rejects you, “You hate me? I hate You”

the only basis to converse is on the basis of our shared humanity, any other basis is can only be based on power- either we are of a tribe, or we are not. Kin or Not Kin

@ John Lee: I’m 100% in agreement with you. However, I fear that what you’re saying is too sensible for today’s world. I feel that identity politics is being pushed on to us whether we like it or not. Personally, I hate it because it forces us to see everyone as an enemy rather than a friend. It’s created a very toxic society.

Well said, John Lee.
I suppose the problem is that after one hears for the thousandth time the claims of other tribes one will want to stand up for one’s own tribe.
The biggest danger I see is the Western liberals’ penchant for appeasement of foreign cultures and the authrotarian approach they take to anyone who criticises a foreign tribe.
We need to differentiate between attacking ideas and attacking people. Islam is a creed that should be disparaged at every opportunity, but Muslims should themselves only be disdained if their behaviour is anti-social and against western values.

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